मेघदूत: "नीचैर्गच्छत्युपरि दशा चक्रनेमिक्रमेण"

समर्थ शिष्या अक्का : "स्वामीच्या कृपाप्रसादे हे सर्व नश्वर आहे असे समजले. पण या नश्वरात तमाशा बहुत आहे."

G C Lichtenberg: “It is as if our languages were confounded: when we want a thought, they bring us a word; when we ask for a word, they give us a dash; and when we expect a dash, there comes a piece of bawdy.”

C. P. Cavafy: "I’d rather look at things than speak about them."

Martin Amis: “Gogol is funny, Tolstoy in his merciless clarity is funny, and Dostoyevsky, funnily enough, is very funny indeed; moreover, the final generation of Russian literature, before it was destroyed by Lenin and Stalin, remained emphatically comic — Bunin, Bely, Bulgakov, Zamyatin. The novel is comic because life is comic (until the inevitable tragedy of the fifth act);...”

सदानंद रेगे: "... पण तुकारामाची गाथा ज्या धुंदीनं आजपर्यंत वाचली जात होती ती धुंदी माझ्याकडे नाहीय. ती मला येऊच शकत नाही याचं कारण स्वभावतःच मी नास्तिक आहे."

".. त्यामुळं आपण त्या दारिद्र्याच्या अनुभवापलीकडे जाऊच शकत नाही. तुम्ही जर अलीकडची सगळी पुस्तके पाहिलीत...तर त्यांच्यामध्ये त्याच्याखेरीज दुसरं काही नाहीच आहे. म्हणजे माणसांच्या नात्यानात्यांतील जी सूक्ष्मता आहे ती क्वचित चितारलेली तुम्हाला दिसेल. कारण हा जो अनुभव आहे... आपले जे अनुभव आहेत ते ढोबळ प्रकारचे आहेत....."

Kenneth Goldsmith: "In 1969 the conceptual artist Douglas Huebler wrote, “The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.”1 I’ve come to embrace Huebler’s ideas, though it might be retooled as “The world is full of texts, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.” It seems an appropriate response to a new condition in writing today: faced with an unprecedented amount of available text, the problem is not needing to write more of it; instead, we must learn to negotiate the vast quantity that exists. How I make my way through this thicket of information—how I manage it, how I parse it, how I organize and distribute it—is what distinguishes my writing from yours."

Tom Wolfe: "The first line of the doctors’ Hippocratic oath is ‘First, do no harm.’ And I think for the writers it would be: ‘First, entertain.’"

विलास सारंग: "… . . 1000 नंतर ज्या प्रकारची संस्कृती रुढ झाली , त्यामध्ये साधारणत्व विश्वात्मकता हे गुण प्राय: लुप्त झाले...आपली संस्कृती अकाली विश्वात्मक साधारणतेला मुकली आहे."

Saturday, November 05, 2016

Abysses For the Profound



"...And how should there be a “common good”! The term contradicts itself: whatever can be common always has little value. In the end it must be as it is and always has been: great things remain for the great, abysses for the profound, nuances and shudders for the refined, and, in brief, all that is rare for the rare..." 

(‘Basic Writings of Nietzsche’, 2000 Introduction by Peter Gay, Translated by Walter Kaufmann)



The beautiful abyss 

courtesy: National Geographic Channel, October 2016


Wednesday, November 02, 2016

यमुना खळी खेळू खेळ मीनाक्षी का...Meenakshi Shirodkar@100

यमुना जळी खेळू खेळ कन्हैय्या का.. लाजता?
 
मला लिहायला अतिशय खेद  वाटतोय की कै. मीनाक्षी शिरोडकरांच्या (११/१०/१९१६-३/६/१९९७) जन्मशताब्दीची सांगता ऑक्टोबर ११ २०१६ रोजी झाली आणि त्याबद्दल एक अक्षर सुद्धा मी कोठे वाचले नाही....(मी जास्त वाचतो असे नाही तरी!)

किती गाजवली होती त्यांनी सिनेसृष्टी एकेकाळी....

मी ज्यावेळी त्यांचा मराठी 'ब्रह्मचारी'तील (१९३८)- माझा अतिशय आवडता सिनेमा-  'बिकिनी' प्रवेश पहिल्यांदा, कित्येक वर्षांपूर्वी, पहिला त्यावेळी त्या मला अतिशय आकर्षक वाटल्या... असे म्हणतात की एक अत्यंत गाजलेला मराठी इतिहासकार त्यांच्या मागे वेड्या सारखा लागला होता...त्याच आश्चर्य वाटत नाही...खालील छबी (मार्च १९४१मधली) बघितल्यावर त्या खळ्यांमध्ये खूप जणांनी गंटांगळ्या मारल्या असणार हे स्पष्ट होते...


'खळी 'मीनाक्षी

छायाचित्रकार - मला माहित नाही कारण त्यांचा उल्लेख अंकात दिसला नाही 

 सौजन्य : वाङ्मय-शोभा, मार्च १९४१

(अंकाची किंमत पहा... २ आणे = १२ पैसे!)

Saturday, October 29, 2016

फुगे- स्वस्तिक ते निरोध...1947 to 2016, A Journey of Rubber

Today October 29 2016 is the first day of Diwali, Shake 1938- Naraka Chaturdashi (नरकचतुर्दशी, शके १९३८)

 Look at the rangoli (रांगोळी) the ladies have drawn 69 years ago....


Artist: Dinanath Dalal (दीनानाथ दलाल), 1947

courtesy: copyright holders of Dalal's work, Vangmay Shobha (वाङ्मय शोभा) and Bookganga.com

DD was clearly excited drawing this picture for first Diwali issue in independent India but the rest of the magazine does not have matching enthusiasm. It was largely because Mr. N C Kelkar (न चि केळकर) had just died. Mr. Kelkar was very, very close to the founder editor of the magazine but I still feel an opportunity to celebrate was missed.

Now India's map also appears in the same issue of the magazine in the following ad:


courtesy: Vangmay Shobha

Who says India never was one country?

courtesy: Vangmay Shobha 

This ad appears on the last page of the magazine. I was really amused by it. Notice how it's carrying a map of India on the globe.

Was balloon a branded product then? It surely had high margins. Now in 2016, we don't have high profile ads of balloons but that of another product also made of rubber: condoms.

[I can't forget the first time, in school, I heard the expression 'Nirodhcha Phuga' (निरोधचा फुगा)...in US, condom is called rubber]
 

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

अरसिक किती हा मॅने, हा पोर्ट्रेट फाडून पडून राहिला...Edouard Manet Slashes His Picture by Degas


लक्ष्मीबाई टिळक:
"...कविता केली म्हणजे त्याची पहिली श्रोती मी. मी इकडे कामदारणीला सांगत असले किंवा कोणाशी काही बोलत असले म्हणजे तर त्याची कविता वाचून दाखविण्याची घाई व्हायची, आणि माझे दुर्लक्ष आहेसे दिसले म्हणजे त्याने ती कविता रागाने फाडून टाकायची. मग दत्तू-बेबीने त्याला चिडवायचे,

- "अरसिक किती हा मेला
हा कविता फाडून बाहिर गेला"-

मग त्याने हसायचे व पुन्हा ती लिहून काढायची. ठोंबऱ्याला कविता फाडण्याचा बराच नाद असावा..."

 (पृष्ठ: २८४, 'स्मृतिचित्रे', १९३४/२०००, वरदा प्रकाशन)

[ठोंबऱ्या= त्र्यंबक बापूजी ठोंबरे= बालकवी, १८९०-१९१८]

Portrait of Edouard Manet and his wife Suzanne

Artist: Edgar Degas


Alastair Smart, The Spectator, October 15 2016, review of Sebastian Smee's 'The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals and Breakthroughs in Modern Art':
"...When the old curmudgeon Edgar Degas died in 1917, a stunning trove of works by Edouard Manet — eight paintings, 14 drawings and 60 prints — was discovered in his studio. There, too, was a portrait of Manet and his wife Suzanne, painted by Degas 50 years earlier. But its right-hand third was missing — which included half of Suzanne’s body and all of the piano she was playing. For some reason, Manet had put a knife through the canvas and sent Degas packing with what remained...

...Artistic inspiration is notoriously tricky to pinpoint. What’s more, in this case we’re dealing with eight of the most brilliantly outlandish individuals in art history. They’re surely the last people whose behaviour and feats we should be trying to explain by way of a pattern.

Heaven only knows what prompted Manet to slash that picture of him by Degas — or, for that matter, why Degas decided to keep it."


In India, of course, we are used to seeing some of the greatest art mutilated by either humans or the passage of time or that has been abandoned midway and I have learned to find great beauty in them.

Sunday, October 23, 2016

Dell or Samsung?: Osama bin Laden's Dilemma!



“Samsung Galaxy Note 2 Phone Catches Fire On IndiGo's Singapore-Chennai Flight... A Samsung Galaxy Note 2 smartphone caught fire inside an IndiGo aircraft while it was landing in Chennai today, prompting aviation regulator DGCA to summon company officials and issue an advisory against the use of this series of devices from the South Korean major on flights.”


 (NDTV, September 23 2016)



 Artist: Mike Luckovich, c 2006

courtesy: AJC and the artist